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How unequal Britain is compared to say Finland or France and its effects on gender relationships is shown in this report by Elle Hunt in The Guardian. Wealth and assets grow faster in value than income growth in the UK and a small section of the population has inherited wealth that accumulates faster than income. Vast gaps in income and wealth are shown for several marriages, how each person felt in the marriage, how they had to deal with public perceptions, and where their own sense of wellbeing helped them navigate this territory. In France or Finland with lower wealth and income disparities and a different culture much less of this is expected than in the UK or the US which has Anglo-Saxon cultural tendencies.

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Friends, Context matters here. Helgi library shows Sweden sugar intake per capita was 44 grams in 1994, dropping to 32 grams in 2021. US sugar intake per capita is 126 grams. UK per capita sugar intake is 100 grams or 20 teaspoons. Lowest recommended intake is 11 grams per person or per capita, staying under 36 grams is important. Then one can say that 32 grams of 9 teaspoons a day of sugar is about right not to cause ill effects. Consumed in a  Swedish Fika tradition in a social setting with friends at street cafes is good for mental health, so Swedes are about right at 32 grams per day, don't you think?  And have a message for all of us? 

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If it is possible and necessary for someone like David Attenborough to rediscover experience with nature unhurried and in quietness it is possible and necessary for all of us. The famous BBC personality and naturalist David Attenborough is considered to be the most popular person in the UK. In this interview in 2020 he talks about his garden and bird watching hobby during the lockdown, the way it is helping to preserve mental health. For the first time he is in one place for months. At 94 years, Attenborough is a bit subdued and looks back at his long career and bringing the natural world to television viewers through natural world series such as Blue Planet, The Living Planet, Our Planet, and Life on Earth. He was a speaker at the Climate Change conference in Poland in 2016 and hopes to speak at Glasgow conference in 2021 about the earth being finite and the need to change human behaviour.  The interviewer senses that something is amiss with all the naturalist wonders that Attenborough has been depicting on television. They seem too perfect and made for reaching large audiences. In the process was something being lost. Even Attenborough senses this as he starts discovering nature through birdwatching with excitement as if he had never done this before. He lists the birds one by one. It is the ability to discover and always treasure this sense of wonder at the natural world, and rediscover it again, that is what we strive for in this world, and so important for mental health.   ...

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After reading this editorial in the WSJ about the origins of the coronavirus, readers will have more questions about EcoHealth Alliance nonprofit which sent $3.4 million to the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) for  research with potential for risky consequences to world public health if something went wrong.  What is gain of function research and what purpose is served in making virus more infectious and contagious such that the National Institutes of Health would send funding overseas for such research are questions that readers may have. Were all the risks considered for such research overseas. The editorial says the US Congress is not showing interest in the origins and the US president Biden has to take up this- some readers might have a question what would make the US Congress not interested in this when coronavirus has affected the US, India, Brazil, Europe, and the poorest countries on earth in unimaginable ways. Can such important matters as world public health fall under the authority of one person, such as Dr. Fauci and other health officials from one country or two countries, when other countries such as India, Brazil, UK, France, Italy, Germany, EU countries, are gravely affected. Global public health has suffered badly and billions of people around the world, in the poorest countries as well as the people in US and Europe have suffered unimaginably in 2020 and 2021 as a consequence of poor decisions. Much needs to be done to get the people themselves informed about public health and how it can be shaped in the future. ...

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Dana Milbank of the WP says the views of some Democrats on Trump as a good Republican nominee based on the notion that he has high negative perception with voters is fraught with dangers for U.S. democracy. Milbank points out that this ignores what is good for the country. Having Trump as the nominee of one of the two main parties would create a divisive atmosphere and is not good for the country, says Milbank. In comparing Trump with Cruz, he says Trump is likely to follow his instincts to operate outside the U.S. constitutional system. Cruz as a person believes in the U.S. constitution and would never endorse violence or action against minorities. Cruz has not done enough to come across as a likable person with his persistent focus on conservative or Reagan values to the exclusion of everything else. This is changing in mid-April 2016 following a CNN interview with the Cruz family, a MSNBC town hall answering questions from undecided voters, and NYT coverage of Cruz at a Brooklyn bakery, that shows a different human face that people have never seen about Cruz. Cruz's self-deprecating humor in a NYT article where he talks about voters not liking "a hectoring scold," is part of this needed change that could have happened earlier in the campaign. About Trump Milbank cites Conservative party prime minister Cameron who says Trump would unite all Britons against him if he ever came to Britain....

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Aligning GM brands into 4 groups with one person in charge of marketing and sales for each group is one change, the other is to bring the brands in each group under one dealer roof. The premium brands Cadillac, Hummer and Saab will form one group. Former Nissan manager Mark McNabb heads the new premium group's marketing and sales.

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Andy Street, Mayor of the West Midlands Combined Authority, says when you consider that London gets 7 times the infrastructure spending per person than West Midlands, "its not bloody surprising" that his region is not growing fast. West Midlands covers a large part of central England, including Wolverhampton, Birmingham and Coventry. Even life expectancy is lower by 8 years in Blackpool, and disposable income can be quarter in Camden compared to North London. Labor's Corbyn and Conservative's Thatcher in the British general election are both campaigning for reviving the regions outside London, that have seen investment in people and technology lag substantially behind London. Regional revival is the big issue in this election. Consider that London which accounted for about 15% of economic output in the 1980's now accounts for nearly 25% of economic output of Britain. Berlin is about 4% of Germany's economy, and Paris 10% of France's economy. A word of caution on Brexit is sounded by experts at the University of Birmingham, who say the whole process of Brexit is so complicated that it may detract from the task of reviving this region. Even though the political upheaval had origins in this discontent, was it more about shifting government attention to the gap between London and the rest of the country, and less about a complex process of withdrawal from the European Union. ...

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Shigeu Ishiba is elected the new LDP leader and prime minister of Japan. He is 67 years and was defense minister. This means the replacement for Fumio Kishida is not a younger leader with new ideas as was said to be the intent behind Kishida stepping aside. Ishiba is a son of a former cabinet minister, something too common in Japan. He was a critic of Abe and Kishida, and is depended upon to clean up corruption in the LDP. Other than that this is still an LDP that has no new solutions, the same old ideas for improving the economic future of the Japanese people, not the kind of fresh thinking that Harris is bringing to the US and which some expected would come from Kishida stepping aside for a younger person with new ideas.

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Stephen Carter at Yale Law School, and Sonia Sotomayor on the Appeals Court of New York, share the idea that a judges's experiences will have an impact on what and how he or she see things, and there is virtue in that impact. And those individual experiences are unique to that person, what makes her who she is , and are to some extent idiosyncratic or special to that person. This adds to the law rather than than detracts from it, by adding to the richness of experience. If the life of the law is experience and it is informed by it, then the richness of experiences on the bench only add to the richness of insight brought to bear in making the decision. Sotomayor explains this in the light of her own experiences, but others could have done so also. And no two women are the same. Justice O'Connor's experiences growing up in the frontier on an Arizona ranch and taking part in ranch activities are just unique, there is just no one like her in the supreme court past and present. The same is true of this Newyorkican (puertorican form the Bronx). These individual experiences temper the sense of shared perception of womanhood, and criss cross over cultural lines in so may ways, that there is no typical black, no typical white and no typical Hispanic, especially in today's heterogenous mix of communities in America. Try a Puerto Rican who can't speak Spanish and doesn't know what tacos are like....

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A clean break from commissions of every sort is needed in India, without that Mohandas Gandhi's work and legacy is lost, the opportunity of modernization of India and the economy on a scale surpassing China using the latest technology and huge investments in infrastructure is lost.  Lyrarc has a pledge in India -The Way Forward for every young person in India to take. The future of infrastructure building, ease of living, modernization of a nation of 1.4 billion depends entirely on this. Every penny, every cent, every rupee goes into infrastructure building to create a modernized nation and economy similar to the US and Europe. The situation with "40% commission" in Karnataka and its impact on the recent outcome in the southern Indian state of Karnataka is shown in the Indian Express. Indian Express analysis shows that the ruling party did well in coastal Karnataka and poorly across the rest of the state in comparison to 2019. It happened even in Gujarat but was corrected in time by Mr. Modi.  This analysis in Indian Express says the reason the vote share of 36% led to 104 seats in 2019 and only 66 seats in 2023 is that a lot of the votes were concentrated not all over Karnataka as in 2019 but only in Old Mysore and in Bengaluru, and also in south Karnataka where it cut into JDS party votes without winning seats. Divine providence offers an opportunity for everyone to reject commissions 100%. Gandhi's Hind Swaraj 1910 needs that kind of committment today to surpass that made in 1931 during the Salt March against British rule, to build a modern nation and modern economy by 2035 comparable to the best in the US and Europe. ...

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Dina Asher-Smith, Britain's greatest sprinter is bouncing back in the 200 metres sprint after the Tokyo Olympics. Here she talks to Sean Ingle in the Guardian.  Much of what she says from her experience and what she has learned is valuable for people working in all walks of life. How do you take the ups and downs (she did not do well at the Tokyo Olympics) and what is the best way to be? On the best way to be- "As a sprinter I want to be light, and bouncy and carefree. So you can't run fast with baggage. It's really unhealthy. You just gotta throw it out. What happened in Tokyo doesn't affect my calibre. It doesn't affect the  work I put in, or my potential. It was just really unfortunate timing. I'm not the first person it has happened to and certainly not the last." She says one never knows what someone else is facing behind the scenes. Nobody is truly unbeatable, and everything is always up for play, even if the odds look to be infinitely stacked against you. That is why she says she approaches every race as a clean slate. And that is why she does not bring whatever  happened last year to this year. And on that last bit of effort she says- "You have to stay focused, be humble and hungry, to keep finding those 0.01 seconds in every phase, and every step you do." ...

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The Indian prime minister's choice for heading Indian Railways and the IT Ministry is similar to his choice of Mr. Jaishankar for the Ministry of External Affairs. He selected a person with the drive and conviction as well as the experience to tackle the important job of modernizing Indian Railways so that it provides the convenience and access that is seen in Europe with new investment and advances in technology. The 50 year old Vaishnaw is from Orissa, yet grew up in Jodhpur where he attended engineering school, before doing M Tech from IIT Kanpur. He had an all India rank of 27 in the Indian Civil Services exam. In 2003 he worked as Deputy Secretary in the prime minister's office when Atal Bihari Vajpayee was prime minister. He was private secretary to Mr. Vajpayee in 2004. He then studied for a Masters degree at the Wharton School of Business, University of Pennsylvania, and worked for General Electric and Siemens in India in transportation related projects. By 2019 Ashwini Vaishnaw had caught the attention of the Indian prime minister as a capable administrator with a can do attitude in India's modernization efforts. He was nominated for the upper house of parliament. In 2021 July he was appointed to lead 2 important ministries - railways and IT. His first action in the first 48 hours was to ask senior officers in the rail ministry and IT ministry to work two shifts alternately from 7am to 3pm, and 3 pm to 12 midnight so that work can be pushed forward that needed to be done in great speed for modernization. Delivering on the vision of the prime minister for modernizing the country is now the task of this ministry and Mr. Vaishnaw. ...

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Good tips for wellbeing and mental health during another election cycle. Amanda Ripley has some good advice in the Washington Post. Move out of a 24 hour news cycle and pause to decide what to read and not to read. Relationships are real and matter, will be there when all this is over years from now. It is about equanimity, maintaining mindfulness. Being a good moral person and teaching your kids the right things, are you doing what is important. Accepting that there was Beaverbrook type journalism before after a British press baron from the last century who loved crises and profited by selling tons of newspapers. Today's versions simply do it using video and podcasts and electronic versions. So it means getting off the rollercoaster ride that profits some press baron. Think in terms of years- a couple of years later there will be 2027 primaries, and five years from now even ten years from now. For someone older one can remember JFK and the New Frontier speeches- was president Harry Truman right to ask John Kennedy not to run because he was too young, would history have turned out better if his energy and zeal for America could have come up later in the nineteen seventies or eighties? Then people worried about too young a candidate, today it is the opposite. The Lord says I am partial to none but supremely dear to me are the wise, in the Bhagavad Gita, in Buddhist texts and in the Bible. And again he says by the raft of knowledge alone you shall go across all sin. Listening well and openness are the road to knowledge and wisdom, leading to mindfulness and peace in 2024 and beyond. ...

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The head of ISRO, India's Space Agency, is an unassuming man of simple needs and simple living. He studied in the Tamil medium, doing his Bachelors in Science from Kanyakumari Hindu College. He comes from a farming family in a village of Kanyakumari.  Used to walking barefoot, wore a dhoti, and only wore slippers when he went to Engineering college. Even with modest rural means, helping his father in his fields, he got his Masters in Aeronautical Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology in Madras, pursued Aerospace Engineering at Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore, and PhD. from IIT, Bombay. He is meticulous about details, and would cancel a meeting till errors found were corrected. Behind the unassuming simple manner is a extremely diligent person who has worked in every phase of rocket design and technology for 36 years at India's Space Agency. India achieved a world record by sending 104 satellites into space with one flight of PSLV, a third generation satellite  launch vehicle with liquid stages, in February 2017- Sivan was a key scientist in this endeavor. He is in every sense a vindication of Gandhi's idea in Hind Swaraj written in a steamship coming back from London to South Africa in 1910 that India would have to go back to its own language, culture, bring opportunity to the mass of rural India, before adopting new technologies from all places. He is also a vindication of the idea that the most diligent and dedicated scientists and engineers willing to persevere over decades are the key to progress for Asia's developing nations, and similarly for a bright future in Africa and Latin America. ...

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UK Business Secretary Kwarteng orders a National Security Review of the acquisition by Chinese semiconductor maker Wingtech through a Dutch subsidiary of a semiconductor factory in Wales. The factories in Wales are becoming a hub of the UK semiconductor industry with research and manufacture of compound semiconductors, which enable electric batteries for cars to get more mileage. Nine Congressmen in the US wrote to the Biden administration about the acquisition and its dangers for the UK and US semiconductor industry's technology being shifted to China. The head of the UK Foreign Affairs committee in parliament also alerted the UK government of the risks involved. The UK government has passed a law that allows it to retroactively cancel deals that are considered a risk for national security. Under the Bush and Obama administrations there was a transfer of western technology through acquisitions of this type and not much was done by the governments in Europe and the US. This enabled China to acquire western technology using its state subsidized firms which had better access to financing for acquiring key western technologies. It was only under the Trump administration that 2 decades after it started in 2000 this process was given attention. It was ignored in the same manner that the Germans under chancellors Schroeder and Merkel allowed Russian energy companies to dominate the energy sector in Germany even to the point of acquiring ownership of the storage of energy on German soil. That dependence allowed by German elites according to the Manchester Guardian in a recent article is now unwinding with the brave and unceasing efforts of Economy Minister Habeck,  who is now the most popular person in Germany for making this  correction in the midst of the Russian invasion of Ukraine with China's support. ...

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What does fast growth in the world's fastest growing economy, that is a key part of America's and the European Union's and Japan's supply chain look like. It is based on people inclusive development called Sab Ka Vikas Sab ke Saath, Gandhiji's idea of the last person in the line ever present and watchful of the task at hand. This Powerpoint of the blueprint of the Indian Budget  for 2024-25 from Nirmala Sitharaman and the Finance Ministry shows a visual of what the growth looks like for the farm, industrial, housing, health, education and other sectors of the economy. It is a journey just beginning under Vikshit Bharat with a target date of the 100th  anniversary of independence 2047. Here one can see the target of increasing capital expenditures for infrastructure and various development schemes by 11.1%. GST (one tax one country) tax revenues are expected to increase by around 12% which support this budget. Strengthening financial sector to bring investment back on track after the pandemic is one of the support pillars, so is deepening and widening tax base through the GST a uniform federal tax for the whole country. Another pillar is proactive inflation management- the story of how India tackled the cost of energy by accessing from different suppliers at the best price is told this week in Feb 2024 in the WSJ. Foreign Minister Jaishankar told the Munich Security Conference with Blinken and Baerbock in the panel that India with 1.4 billion people's future at stake should be seen as done the right thing, the smart thing. Inflation has been kept at about 5%, and key economic growth projected at 7-8% over the next decade with goal of becoming the third largest economy in the world. ...

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"This nation was founded on a simple yet profound principle: No one is above the law. Not the president of the United States. Not a justice on the Supreme Court of the United States. No one. But the Supreme Court’s 6-3 decision on July 1 to grant presidents broad immunity from prosecution for crimes they commit in office means there are virtually no limits on what a president can do. The only limits will be those that are self-imposed by the person occupying the Oval Office.  "I served as a U.S. senator for 36 years, including as chairman and ranking member of the Judiciary Committee. I have overseen more Supreme Court nominations as senator, vice president and president than anyone living today. I have great respect for our institutions and the separation of powers.What is happening now is not normal, and it undermines the public’s confidence in the court’s decisions, including those impacting personal freedoms. We now stand in a breach.That’s why — in the face of increasing threats to America’s democratic institutions — I am calling for three bold reforms to restore trust and accountability to the court and our democracy.First, I am calling for a constitutional amendment called the No One Is Above the Law Amendment." ...

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The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget is a non partisan nonprofit organization formed in 1981 by Connecticut Democrat Giamo and Oklahoma Senator Bellmon of the US Congress, senior members of House and Senate Budget Committtee. To educate the American public on issues related to the US Budgets, where money went and how it is spent. It's estimate for Kamala Harris plan for $6000 child tax credit is $10 billion a year. The existing $3600 a child tax credit in 2021 is estimated to cost $110 billion a year. Lyrarc estimate this will be offset by savings in Medicare of $36 billion a year from Medicare negotiation with Pharma as indicated by president Biden, and by $40 billion a year in billionaires paying 25% instead of 8.2% as a minimum tax per Biden, additional savings coming from very high income earners earning above $10 million. This would bring the cost of helping children in the first crucial years of life to below $44 billion a year. And making a huge investment in children at a time when everything has gone up in price from diapers, to baby food, to childcare and early childhood learning crucial for the future of America. We believe it is imperative to invest in children after the pandemic has cost 1 million lives and left for each dead person 8-9 persons in precarious situations financially. Educationally it has left children behind from missing crucial school years. These gaps will need to be filled and this is only one investment in the right place to correct this problem to prevent America from being handicapped forever by these problems and gaps in education in early years.  ...

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As the coronavirus pandemic reaches the 20 month mark in October 2021 and the government reaches a target of 1 billion vaccinations given in India, prime minister Modi talks about his experience handling the vaccination drive in this interview. It covers a wide range of topics from his initial experiences in development in Gujarat, translating this experience to the national setting, the multiple yojanas or projects from Swachh Bharat (Clean India), toilets for all, bank accounts for the whole population, cooking gas for women, decisions taken for Aadhar, digitization, GST. His 35 years spent in poverty as a social worker that gave him a clear idea of the aspirations of the working poor. On the achievement of one billion vaccinations- It was the careful preparation that happened as early as March 2020 that carefully anticipated all possible problems and tackled each one of them that made it possible. "Vaccinating such a large number of people comes with its own share of complexities. Ensuring proper temperature control of complexities, cold chain infrastructure across the length and breadth of the country, timely delivery from the manufacturing plant to the remotest vaccination delivery point, supply of needles and syringes, training of vaccinators and preparing for adverse reactions, from quick registration to certificate generation to reminder for next appointment. We needed to look at the entire logistics, planning, and progress of the vaccination drive." To understand the person completely one has to go back to the origins of his experience, skills learned, and his inspiration for the effort. Modi entered the chief minister's office in the western Indian state of Gujarat facing the Arabian sea in 2001. He entered office at the time of the Bhuj earthquake in Gujarat and describes his taking the chief minister's office as accidental as he had been a social worker for 30 years. "Let alone reluctance to join electoral politics, I had nothing to do with the political domain itself. My surroundings, my inner world, my philosophy- these were very different. Right from my younger days,my bent was spiritual. The philosophy of "Jan Seva Hi Prabhu Seva" Serving the people is akin to serving the Divine, which was propounded by Ramakrishna Paramahamsa and Swami Vivekananda inspired me. It became the driving force in whatever I did." In 2014 it was with the inspiration from Swami Vivekananda and taking up Vivekananda's vision for the Indian people that Modi began his campaign to lead the BJP party. It may be looking back that Vivekananda guided Modi in all his projects for a Clean India, Jal Jeevan, Indian infrastructure that benefits the last man in the queue in the country, commitment to hard work. "Global experience says government should be there for those whom nobody is there. Government's whole focus should be on helping them." To do this, to meet the needs of that last person left out in India, he could see that old notions of opposites had to be set aside. "Outdated theories such as the private sector vs the public sector, government vs. people, rich vs. poor, urban vs. rural, are still on people's minds and they try to fit everything into this." Governments since independence in 1947 followed the same political and economic thought. After Gandhi negotiated with the British government for self rule or Swaraj an experimental form was set up with provincial governments ministries with limited powers formed in the 1930's through elections. Many of these ministries had the same problems that were found after independence in 1947, as one sees in the writings in the Gandhi library. They lasted for a few years before they were dissolved by the British government. These problems were more evident under Nehru and Indira Gandhi right into the 1970's and beyond. This was followed by a period of relative stagnation. Most ministries failed to seriously address India's economic problems, urbanization issues and agricultural issues remained unaddressed, and industry building was done with a limited vision and scaled down goals. In some ways the elections created a political class interested in perpetuating itself and did not build administrations based on learning, hard work and delivering on projects with scaled up targets to match the dire needs of the country. One sees similarities with France before 1960, before De Gaulle. A mosaic of peoples all separate from each other, with agriculture the main occupation, and most agriculture done the way it was in the nineteenth century by hand and using horses and cattle- this is the picture of France shown in Nous Paysouns, We Farmers, a documentary on Le Monde French television in October 2021. It was De Gaulle who supported a shift to presidential form of government for France that helped with the transformation through modernization and infrastructure development. Tractors were introduced in 1960 to mechanize agriculture. Road, bridges, rail transport, logistics were planned in the way Gati Shakti master plan for India is now being executed. There can be no transformation without this. Unstable coalition governments in France and lack of clarity and decision making before 1960 made such development impossible. India entered such a period in the 1970's. "The politics of our country is such that till now, we have seen only one model in which governments are run to build the next government (sarkar banane ke liye chalayi jaati haye). My fundamental thinking is different. I believe we have to run the government to build the nation (desh banane ke liye sarkar chalani haye)."  Chalta haye, Chalne do. What is will not change. Families, farmers and workers in India, for a long time accepted this without questioning.  "I take decisions based on Gandhiji's talisman that sees how my decisions will benefit or harm the poorest or weakest person." "While taking decisions, I stop even if the slightest of vested interests is visible to me. The decision should be pure and authentic, and if the decision passes through all these tests, then I firmly move forward to implement such a decision."           ...

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Sir Howard Davies, director of the London School of Economics, and the expanded ties of the London School of Economics with the one party Ghadafi regime in Libya. Sir Howard was the first chairman of the Financial Services Authority, the UK's financial regulator, and deputy governor of the Bank of England from 1995 to 1997.

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Zweig cautions against putting too much faith in experts, or quant models such as "value at risk" or VAR, used by JP Morgan to assess risk. He cites physicist Richard Feynmann: "You must not fool yourself- and you are the easiest person to fool." And the address Feynmann gave at the 1974 commencement of Caltech, in which he said avoid the "cargo cult" mentality of Pacific Islanders who believed that just by standing on runways they could make plane full of food and clothing land, similiar to the ways they did after World War II. Exaggerated returns of over 50% call for more vigilance to look at risks of failure.

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Higher per capita wheat consumption in Middle East countries means that the impact of rising wheat prices hits these countries harder. Wheat futures have gone up by 91% in less than one year. Tunisians for example eat 478 pounds per person a year compared to 177 pounds in the U.S., according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization. Governments in the Middle East buy wheat at world prices and subsidize it heavily to meet the needs of their people. Wheat at these prices cost Egypt $361 per metric ton in February, which was up significantly from $172 in July 2010. This adds $1.7 billion to Egypt's import bill in 12 months.